Meta has quietly launched a new standalone app for Facebook Groups, called “Forum”. The company appears to be positioning the forum as a platform that functions similarly to Reddit, describing the application as a “dedicated space built for deeper conversations, real answers and communities that matter to you.”
The app appears to have been first spotted by a social media consultant Matt Navarre.
After logging in with your Facebook account, the forum will load your groups, profile, and activity, and allow you to post with a nickname, just like in the standard Facebook app. Meta noted that your groups still exist on Facebook and anything you share on the forum will be visible in your Facebook groups.
Meta says forum feeds focus on conversations within groups, allowing users to see “what real people are saying, not just what’s trending,” and making it easy to pick up where they left off.
The app includes an AI-powered “Ask” tab that allows users to ask questions and receive answers compiled from discussions between different groups. There’s also an AI admin assistant that helps admins manage groups and moderate content.
This isn’t the first time Meta has launched a standalone team app. In 2014, the company released a special Application for groups which aimed to make it easier for users to share content in groups, but that effort ended in 2017.
The forum is one of two new Meta applications in recent weeks. Last month, the social media company released a new app called Instants that lets users share disappearing photos with friends on Instagram.
Instant and the forum come amid a broader effort at Meta to release more apps. THE Wall Street Journal reported a few weeks ago that CEO Mark Zuckerberg told employees that with AI-driven efficiencies allowing the company to build more apps, the social media giant now aims to release many more apps than it has historically.
Referring to Meta’s head of product office, Chris Cox, Zuckerberg reportedly said, “Well, Chris and I were talking about ‘okay, can we build 50 new apps?’ Like, yeah probably. But we should probably start by doing a few before we just, like, keep trying to do 50 at once.”
Meta may think consumers want more apps, but that’s probably not the case, especially when its new apps mostly end up being copycats of other popular services. Instants, for example, borrows ideas from BeReal and Snapchat, while Meta Edits, launched last year, is largely a copy of ByteDance’s CapCut.
Meta did not immediately return a request for comment.
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